


Before Forgetting, Before Remembrance

by 23Murasaki



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Jade Empire
Genre: Cole's speech/thought patterns are /fun/, Crossover, Fireworks, Gen, Human Cole, Kang is still technically Lord Lao but that's not a character tag that I can find so whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Corypheus is defeated, after Solas has vanished, and before anything grand can happen, Cole meets a stranger cloaked in the Fade outside of Skyhold. They talk. It helps.</p>
<p>(Because very few things will convince me that Jade Empire and Dragon Age do not take place on the same planet, and I am overly fond of Cole and of Kang. Takes place post-DA:I/pre-JE.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before Forgetting, Before Remembrance

People did not fall out of the sky. Cole knew that, because it was explained to him multiple times when he asked about the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor did not fall out of the sky, though. She fell out of a rift. That was different. The man in front of him just fell out of the sky itself, because there were no rifts there. The sky was whole and the Veil was healed, and his worlds were separate once again (and he was human now, hollow but heavy and here, he couldn’t forget, couldn’t be forgotten, forsaken, stolen and subsumed). He looked carefully at the man and wondered what the man was, because Varric would say the man was a man and a mage but he was wrapped in wings and wind and words words words from other worlds, whispered with wonder and wisdom while things burned. He wasn’t supposed to tell people that.  
  
“Oh, I see, I see,” said the strange man suddenly, adjusting what sat on his face over his eyes as he spoke. His voice sounded like it was a lot of different sounds (if he had listened to Solas he would know, but Solas was far away and forgetting but not forgotten and frightful now, howling at the moon, and Cole was here alone), but it wasn’t unpleasant, as though he was a demon. He was bigger, bigger than a demon and older, bright like burning (opening ancient doors with his eyes closed and rushing to the future that didn’t believe in him– oh age, oh age, it would be easier to make himself forget, after a while).  
  
“Oh, you do?” Cole asked carefully, blinking. The stranger nodded enthusiastically.  
  
“Oh yes,” he said. “You are quite right, child, I am a stranger.” He laughed and the Fade all about him laughed too. “I am a stranger because I am one who is strange! And one from strange lands, hm?”  
  
“Did you read my mind?” Cole asked. “I am not supposed to read people’s minds. It’s not polite.” That made the stranger laugh harder, his head thrown back and his shoulders shaking out of time with the sound. He wasn’t very good, Cole thought, at being a person like other people.  
  
“Reading a mind, reading a face, reading an old old old book, isn’t that much the same thing?” he asked. He moved the things covering his eyes, and they were (deep, dark, drowning, deceit and dismay and disbelief, he walked away because he would not be one among ancient gods, he would fly) (Solas would sleep, had slept, but this one ran and flew, fire and faithlessness) older still.  
  
“People usually read books,” said Cole. “Sometimes faces. I don’t know how to do that.” The stranger looked at him for a long time, then smiled again. This was a different sort of smile (only a child, after all, though it’s tough to tell with spirits, still a child, still gentle and kind)(compassion is a poor sort of guardian, but duty chosen is duty chosen, and who are we to send them away?), Cole thought. (Sweet smells on summer wind, flowers fall among fireflies, circles in the Fade, sweeping and rising, peaches sweet sweet sweet and melting on the tongues of children who would be gods, but that is time long past.)  
  
“You’ve been very helpful to me, you know,” said the stranger. (Eternal, ephemeral, everything and anything in the difference between a plait and a knot and a loosely-held cord. Eternity is ephemeral and we are eternally reborn but what do we do when it ends?)  
  
“I have?” Cole asked. “I didn’t do anything.”  
  
“You gave me an answer,” said the stranger. “It’s more than most people do, my boy. And I didn’t even have to ask you a question! So many people don’t give you an answer if you give them questions, but you managed quite well without it!” (Ink on paper, chisel on stone, the rhythm of cogs in machine that’s pressing pressured chugging and cracking: the flame of the forge flickers but never falters but who will watch it who will watch it no one is coming today.) He pulled a box out of his bag, and Cole caught the scent of (celebration, joy, hands clapping as they dance under a god’s face, they’re eating bread and sweets and laughing at lights in the air, this is what creation gives us why do we turn it to wicked burning uses not here never here I forbid it we will only have beauty and marvels) gaatlok clinging to it. “Do you know what this is?”  
  
“It explodes,” said Cole carefully. “Right?”  
  
“It flies too,” said the stranger cheerfully. “You aim one of these upwards and give it a light and boom! It’s–“ (like going home, the smell of peach blossoms in the air, but the past no longer exists like we do so make it again and fly forward) “–beautiful and colorful.” He plucked a small rocket from the box and held it out to Cole. “Try it.”  
  
He did try it, tumbling with his flint, and moments later he saw it light the sky with a burst of color and noise, painting the sky (-that-is-held, one assumes, since you call the place Skyhold) red and gold while the stranger laughed (dreamed of times long past and times to be, but even the Fade changes when you don’t expect it) and clapped his hands. Cole grinned too, watching the cascading sparks above him. He didn’t look when the stranger pressed the box (take it use it laugh smile make all your friends look to the glory of an earthly heaven) into his hands, and maybe he should have, because the next moment the sparks faded and the stranger was (running again, once more with a purpose, circumnavigate what can’t be circular and cyclical and cycling but must, we must always end to begin again) gone. It was getting dark. Everyone in Skyhold would be tired from acting and from not acting, tired from the world looking at them. But if the world could look at something else, if they could look at something else–  
  
Yes. That would help.  
  
With a resolute smile, Cole turned around and headed back.


End file.
